a happy place

Bizarre Facts About Famous Men — Charles Darwin

This is the second drawing in the series of Bizarre Facts About Famous Men. The fact to man ratio has now been firmly established as 2 to 1. I made sure to find at least 2 sources per bizarre fact before deeming its veracity fit to sketch.

What may not be apparent at first glance is that there’s always a bit more to the fact than fits in a tiny, smutchy box at the bottom of the drawing, so here it is.

Darwin in college was a member of The Gourmet Club, which was commonly referred to as The Glutton Club as the purpose of the club was for members to dine on “strange flesh”, animals not typically eaten by human beings. This odd predilection persisted with Chuck after his college years, so presumably, the man associated with his time spent on the Galapagos islands must have dined on the Galapagos tortoise.

Something Darwin isn’t typically remembered for is his decades spent studying earthworms, including the book he published on the subject of worms The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations of their Habits. It was his next book published following Origin of the Species. Ol’ Chuck did several experiments with earthworms, one of which was to see if the low bass tones of the bassoon which promote… well you can read the caption. The part not included here is that Darwin didn’t really think it would work, but gave it the old college try.